


here at the end of all things

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, First Kiss, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Blame Tumblr, Inspired By Tumblr, Last Kiss, Love Confessions, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Regret, Self-Flagellation, Why Did I Write This?, angst and kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 11:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11417316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: The last moments on the beach, from Cassian's point of view.





	here at the end of all things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imsfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/gifts).



> [This thing](https://imsfire2.tumblr.com/post/162660281941/jynersohs-im-totally-fine-its-just-for-a) appeared on my tumblr dash.
> 
> I wrote for it because of reasons.
> 
> Maybe take a tissue box with you for this one.

He is on the sand. He is no longer on his feet. He can’t get up any more, not even if he tries, because even if he’s lucky enough to have walked away from that fall, from those sharp edges of information storage and the unimaginable heights of the Empire’s plans to keep on dominating the galaxy, even if he’s lucky enough to have still had some kind of stability, just enough to judge the blaster in his hand and the strength of the shot and the sight of Orson Krennic’s shoulder in his pain-feeble vision, he’s out of luck now, here, on the sand, with the looming moon that is the Death Star, that is the end of his life, already hanging malevolently at the zenith of this Scarif sky.

And he’s still wracked by pain from head to foot. Not from his hunger or thirst, not from the blood running hot and panicked beneath his skin with the rush of his survival instinct, not from the unnameable irreplaceable incredible loss that beats him down and beats him into the silence of all his regrets. Not from the fact that he’s tried to be something like good, something like honorable, in these past few days -- and being good and being honorable are nothing at all easy things to do.

He’s in pain because -- he’d kissed her so desperately in the thrum and the controlled fall of that dark elevator, and he’d kissed her to pour all the living bits and pieces of his soul into her hands, and that’s -- that’s really all he’s got to give her, all that’s left of him now. Bits and pieces of himself, the last tiny parts of him that haven’t become tarnished, that haven’t gotten broken, in the years of the war and the years of getting blood on his hands for the sake of others.

For the sake of others who won’t know what he’s done. 

Not even he wants to know, intimately, in all their terrifying details, all the things he’s done for the cause that he’s thought good all his waking life, since the day he took up arms in the howling cold of Fest, with his hands too little to carry the blaster comfortably -- and yet. He’d picked up the blaster, he’d sighted in on the stormtrooper who was kicking at an elderly woman so she’d move faster, he’d put four short fingers on the trigger and pulled, and fallen over backwards with the recoil.

And rose to see that the stormtrooper would never get up again, dead to a lucky shot, Cassian having shot him or her in the nape of the neck where the blank evil mask of the white helmet had been cracked by earlier brawls.

He’s been taking that shot again and again ever since, and he’s followed orders and disobeyed them. He has buried the dead and he has maimed the living. He has gone on and on through the long and thankless and silent and hidden days, skulking, thinking himself brave and a bastard by turns. The things he’s done -- he can’t forget them, and he doesn’t want to remember them, and the voices of the dead haunt his every living moment.

But for that elevator: where the voices had suddenly vanished into shocking quiet. Where the memories had cracked and splintered and fallen away into the immediate presence of Jyn, into the warmth of her trembling body and the bruising weight of her hands curled into his arms, into the searing blessing of her kiss -- 

How, how had she kissed him, when she’d spat painful truth at him and recoiled away? He thinks, in the here and now, that maybe she meant for those words to hurt both of them: because he was almost a stormtrooper, and she ran for her life from stormtroopers every step of the way, and she could have done more. He could have been better.

There had always been a choice, always, even in the moment where there seemed to be none, because life and living and being truly alive were always valid choices, even in these very last moments --

He can only hear the breeze here, only sounding placid, because it carries the stench of death in so many forms to him. The acrid residue of bombs and blasters and battering down. The dead bodies in the surf, and the screams of the pilots trying to escape, and the silence of those who had already died.

He can feel the waves washing onto the shore and he knows that they would have kept on frothing and foaming up onto the sand that yields beneath his weight, beneath Jyn’s, but for the very real fact that this world is about to die, or at least this part of the world is, with the water and the wind about to be smashed into terrible green light --

No, no, he still wants to live in these last moments.

So he looks at Jyn and he looks at the tears on her cheeks. The thin pained line of her mouth. 

It is an effort to raise his hand -- he can feel fresh heat flowing out onto his skin, painting him with his pain, and he touches the angle of her jawline. The limp strands of her hair that catch on his fingertips. The anger that he can still see in her eyes, as though she’s determined to be defiant to the last.

He can take that as a good example -- he knows that this is not the death he ever planned for but it is a death that he can own and that he can be proud of as his own because he still chose to live in the last moment -- 

But first, he musters up the courage to ask for her. “Jyn,” he says. He croaks.

Her eyes boring in on him, not to wound. Just to see him. Just to look at him and into him, the last time, the last -- 

“I think I’m proud of you,” she says. “Because you came back for me. Because you came with me.”

“You deserve to be believed in. And I believe you. I will still believe you. I will still follow you.”

“This is all I have for you,” she says. Tilts her head briefly to the side. “I can give you -- what is left of me.”

“And that’s all I have for you,” he says. “I want you to accept it. That’s not my choice to make, though. It’s yours.” He takes a deep breath. “I am. Yours, I mean.”

“We didn’t have time.”

He can’t stop the sob that breaks from his lips at that. “We never had any. I was too busy fighting what I thought was the good fight.”

“I was just trying to survive. Not even to live,” Jyn says. “But maybe I know what that is. Living.”

Here are her hands raising him gently up. Here is her body, swaying into his, and he is on his knees before her, and she is on her knees before him.

There is a light on the horizon. 

It is a green flash that grows and hungers.

And he looks at her, and her eyes are almost closed with fear and pain, and he says, “I wanted to love you.”

She doesn’t reply, not in words.

The tears fall into her kiss, the kiss she presses desperately into him, and he can only drink her in, wanting her to take him as the last memory, the last sensations, the last --

With the rumbling scream of the Death Star’s attack shaking this world, shaking this shore, he lets the kiss fall away. Pulls her close. The hard points of her cheekbone and her chin against him, the harsh rasp of her weeping as she tangles her fingers into his hair, pulling too hard, she’s hurting him --

He would rather be hurt this way --

“Jyn,” he says, and he closes his eyes. 

No memories to flash at him.

No regrets to pull him down.

He opens his eyes.

Wants her face to be the last thing he sees.

Wants her to see him, here at the very end --

He is already burning up, he is already dying, and he can just barely see Jyn, like she’s still trying to say something, but her face is swallowed up by that green green light --

His last thought: “Don’t go where I can’t follow you. I will follow you into this.” 

Cassian Andor dies, with Jyn Erso in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry about Rebelcaptain with me -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
